Bone Carvings
by The Chthonic Professor
Summary: This life is a cruel thing, dealing the worst hands to those who deserve only the best. I refuse to let this life control me, to beat me down, to adorn me in labels and titles I neither want, nor need. Even when this life throws my broken body to the dirt, rends my flesh from my bones, I will continue to carve out my own path. This is my strength. This is my ninja way. Self-Insert.


**_Bone Carvings_**

 ** _The Chthonic Professor_**

 ** _Summary:_** _This life is a cruel thing, dealing the worst hands to those who deserve only the best. I refuse to let this life control me, to beat me down, to adorn me in labels and titles I neither want, nor need. Even when this life throws my broken body to the dirt, rends my flesh from my bones, I will continue to carve out my own path. This is my strength. This is my ninja way._

 ** _Disclaimer:_** _I don't own Naruto._

 ** _Warning:_** _Self-insert._

-.-

 ** _Chapter One - Broken Bones_**

-.-

Life wasn't easy for Uzumaki Kagayakumi. I realized it even back then. She was young, far too young, to have been a mother. I wasn't allowed into the village very often, but in those few times when I found myself outside of our tiny home it wasn't too difficult to make the connection. Compared to other mothers, my mother was still practically a child herself. She was alone, having only me for company. She struggled. Yet, even then, she persevered. I was her world, the centre of her Universe, as she was mine.

It never stopped her from being the most incredible mother any child could ever ask for.

She was the very definition of super-mom. Ever-cheerful and always willing to play with her baby boy, she loved me to the bottom of her heart. I was her whole world, everything she did, she did it for me. For my well-being, my safety, my _happiness_. She would spend all day with me, keeping the two of us occupied from sunrise to sundown with any and every activity under the sun. Whether it was being chased around the house by my mother wielding handfuls of foamy soap, basking for hours under the sun during those few hot days of the year, or just listening to her sing soft lullabies under the light of the moon, she never failed to keep us busy.

And as we played, I learned. She taught me through games, through storytelling, through laughter and joy, and I _learned_. She would tell me again and again, _"Your thirst for knowledge knows no bounds, Ku-chan. It is your greatest strength. Don't you ever let anyone tell you otherwise."_ And every time she said it, she would bend down and leave a soft kiss upon my brow.

She taught me to read and write, but more than that, she taught me to _think_. She taught me to use my head, to be aware and alert.

 _"_ _Steel is cold, and steel is sharp, Ku-chan."_ She would tell me. Sitting side-by-side on the small tattered couch in the living room, her face was serious, but her eyes? They would _glow_ , like two violet gems sparkling softly under the gentle caress of the moon. _"Steel is dangerous. Steel can cause far more harm than good, do not forget this, Ku-chan. However, far more dangerous than steel is the man who chooses to wield it for his own gain. The mind is a tool far more dangerous than any steel blade, for without direction, without intent, steel is harmless. Your mind is sharper than any steel blade, Ku-chan. Use it wisely."_

It is advice I listen to even now, years after those words were first spoken to me.

As I continued to grow under my mother's careful guidance, so did the capacity of my mind. Though I may have had little experience with the world outside of our little house in the woods, I was highly aware of my surroundings, even at a young age. I knew that life wasn't easy for my mother. As much as she laughed and she played and she loved, she was also unflinchingly serious at times. I knew my mother went to incredible lengths in order to keep the both of us alive, in order to keep me happy. I knew that as much as she played with me during the day, the moment she tucked me into bed she would dress in her pretty make-up and dresses for work before heading out the door. The few times I woke up when she came back in to check on me, she always had dark circles under her eyes.

Sometimes, when she woke up early in the morning, her eyes - normally so vibrantly violet - looked dull and blunt, like a blade that had been overused and was now useless.

So, even when she was serious, even when her eyes stopped shining, I continued to laugh and to play and to learn. I would try again and again until, finally, I succeeded in returning my mother to her former, smiling, self. She was an incredible woman and I loved her with all my heart. She, more than anyone, deserved happiness.

I knew that, even back then.

Yet, life has an odd way of repaying those who only deserve the best. Certainly, a kind young woman forced to raise and support a child entirely on her own only deserved the _world_? Apparently not. Life owed Uzumaki Kagayakumi the world.

Life repaid her by taking her life away.

-.-

The day was a normal one, perfectly standard weather for a day in Water Country. The sky was overcast and the air was thick with humidity. I'd grown accustomed to the way my clothes clung to my skin, but that didn't mean I ever enjoyed the disgusting feeling. Nonetheless, that day I found myself outside in the small, dilapidated backyard. I'd been practicing the basic stances for the Senkaiken, having grown bored of my daily Fuinjutsu practice. There were only so many Kanji you could write over and over again before the action simply becomes too mind-numbing to bear any longer.

Though my mother was young and had technically never been a ninja, she'd still been educated enough in our family's ways to pass their traditions down to me. She'd told me of our history, of the greatness we'd once achieved as the allies of the Senju, and as the greatest Seal Masters in the Elemental Nations. I'd listened, awed, as she weaved the tale of a battle waged with the odds stacked against us ten-to-one. I'd mourned, saddened by the news that the Uzumaki had been annihilated, spread to the four corners of the world.

The knowledge that my mother and I could very well be the last of our once-incredible clan was a weight that rested heavy on my young shoulders. Though I'd never met them, I couldn't help but feel pride in the strength of my ancestors. I promised myself it was a legacy I would live up to.

While my mind whirled with these thoughts, my body twisted and flowed through long-memorized motions. I was so deep in my thoughts that I nearly jumped out of my skin when the sound of shattering glass and a short scream echoed from the house. Startled, I rushed to the back door and yanked it open. Our small dining room greeted me.

My mother stumbled in from the kitchen, red hair a tangled mess, violet eyes wide and terrified. She had the look of a cornered animal on her face. That, more than anything, sent my heart racing.

"Mama-" I tried, only to be immediately interrupted.

"Ku-chan!" Her voice was shrill with fright. She lurched forwards, grabbed me by the shoulders and looked me in the eyes. "Run, Ku-chan! You mustn't let them catch you!"

There was a crashing sound from the other room, and suddenly a man was standing in the doorway behind my mother. He was large, his bulky form taking up the entire wooden frame. On his forehead rested a metal plate on a cloth.

This man was a ninja. A Kiri ninja.

A bloodline purist.

It took me far too long to notice the wickedly curved tip of a blade sitting mere inches from my nose, dripping blood on the hardwood floors of the dining room. It took me longer to notice my mother's unseeing eyes, and the cold metal sprouting from right in between them.

My scream was loud enough to wake the dead.

-.-

I don't know how long it took me to regain consciousness, but by the time I did, night had fallen. My body ached from head to toe. Muscles occasionally spasmed involuntarily, wracking my small frame with numerous pinching pains. I felt like I was waking up from a nightmare. My movements were slow, my head muddled.

I tried to sit up, groaning as my body protested my every move. I was laying on the grass at the back of the house, the starless night sky sitting like a dark omen high above. I finally managed to gather my hands beneath me, pushing myself shakily into an upright position. Brushing aside a stray lock of pink hair as it fell before my eyes, I took in the grisly scene before me. It was like something out of a nightmare. A terror too frightening for the waking mind to comprehend.

The house was gone. Wooden debris littered the ground in a radius around the metaphorical blast zone. Taking up the expanse of space where a house used to sit were a number of massive white spires. A great number of these spires were coated in a thick film of blood, some still dripping the viscous liquid down their sides like horrible renditions of a network of veins.

I approached the spires with tentative steps on wobbly legs. My body was sapped of all strength as a dawning horror filled the pit of my stomach. It left my head spinning and my throat constricted painfully. I felt like puking.

Repulsive curiosity filled my thoughts. I needed to know. No, that was wrong. I already knew, I just needed conformation. It was confirmation I would receive, post-haste.

My fingers brushed the nearest spire. It began as the softest of caresses, a tentative, wary touch. Then the pads of fingers and thumb were pressing into the spire, and suddenly I was laying my palm flat against the horrifying structure.

And I knew. I knew, because beneath the cold, hard surface lay a thrumming warmth. A pulsing heat, something intimate and familiar in ways I couldn't even begin to describe. Within me, that exact same pulsing throb resonated with the material beneath my fingertips. I knew what it was without having to ask.

 _Bone_.

Beneath my fingers lay a spire made of bone. A spire which had torn not only my house, but the Kiri ninja and _my mother_ to shreds. Bone which was as familiar to me as the palm of my hand. Bone which had come form me, from a place deep down that I would forever be familiar with.

 _Chakra_.

I had manipulated bone to become more than it once was, and I had done it with my chakra. I watched, detached from the experience, as I pushed chakra through my arm and, slowly, a bone rose from beneath to eventually break through skin. It was painful, but that didn't matter. I could no longer register the pain.

Because I had done this. I had killed my mother's murderer, had turned him to little more than a pule of gore and viscera. I had activated a dormant Kekkei Genkai in order to do so, arming myself with a weapon with near limitless potential for the future in the process.

All it took for me to come to this realization was the brutal murder of my mother, the only person in this life that truly mattered.

-.-

This life is a cruel thing. Not only was my mother's life taken away entirely unjustly, it left me living a facade. My body breathed, it woke up and fell asleep whenever it needed to in order to survive, but that's all it did. Survive. Days blurred into weeks. I forgot what it felt like to have a stomach filled with food. My body slowly grew more emaciated. My pink hair slowly faded to an indistinct brown, alongside the rags I was left to clothe myself with. Bit by bit, my ribs became more and more visible through the skin stretched over my chest.

I was starving. Living on the streets of a small town in Water Country was slowly killing me. I was too young, too weak and unmotivated to keep myself alive. I had nothing left. There was no reason for me to keep going, to find the strength to move, and to _keep_ moving on.

By the time they found me, there was almost nothing left. I'd been on the streets for nearly a year. By now my body looked more skeletal than human. My eyes, once so vibrant, had sunken deep into my skull. They were haunted, scarred by the vicious nature of the world. I looked like a walking corpse.

I'm still not sure what possessed her to approach me that day.

My eyes had closed, head leaning back against the cold stone wall behind me. I no longer had the strength to move. My thoughts were sluggish, as if even my brain had lost the energy necessary to function at a standard capacity.

"Hey."

I struggled to lift my eyelids, staring through blurry eyes at the vision of hope in front of me. It took a second for her kind brown eyes to come into focus, but before I could take a moment to really observe them, my attention was drawn to the object she held in her hands.

Bread. It was a loaf of bread. And she was offering it to me.

I looked back up at her, thoroughly confused. "Why?" I'd croaked, exercising vocal chords that hadn't seen use in weeks.

"Because I know what it's like to starve."

And that's how I met Yuki Haku.

-.-

I was broken. It was a startling realization, one that left me reeling for a while. But, it left me reeling only for a short while. It could be nothing less than short under the harsh tutelage of Momochi Zabuza. I had no choice but to move on, to keep marching forwards through the underbrush life decided to throw on my unbeaten path.

Zabuza was young, the same age as my mother, but he was strong. Haku, I found out, was three years older than me. Initially it had only been Haku's kindness that kept me alive. For two days, she hunted me down in that small out-of-the-way village and fed me. Otherwise, without her care, I'm sure I would have perished. Zabuza wanted nothing to do with me, but he didn't stop Haku from feeding me, from keeping me alive. It wasn't until the day they were meant to leave the village that Zabuza finally took an interest in me.

Haku had come to visit me one last time before she left, and was trying to convince me to continue feeding myself after she left. She tried convincing me that I was worth something. She told me that my mother wouldn't have wanted this life for me, that she would wish her son was happy and healthy, rather than wasting away as a skeleton posing for a human boy.

Then, before either of us could react, some homeless man from the village attacked Haku from behind. He'd seen the clean, decent clothes Haku wore, and assumed she had money. If not, he claimed he could still gain some pleasure from her flesh, in the end.

Haku had a kind heart. It was something I'd come to know on an instinctive level over the two days spent in her company. However, I also knew she was strong. She was training in the arts of the shinobi, the arts my ancient clan once practiced, and she was far from defenceless. The rational part of my brain knew, even understood, that she could handle herself. The emotional part of my brain clearly hadn't received the memo.

Before any of us could blink I'd dug a hand into my chest cavity, curled my fingers around my lowest rib, and _yanked._ It came free with a horrifying slurping-sucking sound, splattering blood across the ground, Haku, and her unnamed assailant. It'd hurt, but that didn't really matter. All of me hurt. This was just a different type of pain.

Weapon in hand, I'd promptly shoved the piece of bone through the assailant's eye socket and up into his brain. He was slumped to the floor, dead, in seconds.

Zabuza had witnessed the entire thing from where he'd appeared on the opposite end of the street. He'd taken one look at me and grinned right through the bandages wrapped around the lower half of his face.

"C'mon, kid." He'd said with a voice like stones and gravel. "We're leaving."

And that had been that.


End file.
